Wiping HP-UX disks

Used the following process to "wipe" HP-UX physical disks for a server we are returning to the vendor. Note that the HP-UX mediainit command will low-level format a disk, making data retrieval very difficult, but not impossible. For information on how to "securely" wipe information from a disk, visit Unix Secure File Deletions.

1. Determine the logical path to the physical disks and CD-ROM device to boot from.

# ioscan -fnC disk

disk 0 0/0/2/0.6.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE SEAGATE ST39102LC
/dev/dsk/c1t6d0 /dev/rdsk/c1t6d0
disk 1 0/0/2/1.6.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE SEAGATE ST39102LC
/dev/dsk/c2t6d0 /dev/rdsk/c2t6d0
disk 2 0/4/0/0.1.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE HP DVD-ROM 6x/32x
/dev/dsk/c3t1d0 /dev/rdsk/c3t1d0

2. Insert the HP-UX CD into the CD-ROM drive. Reboot the system. When prompted, interrupt the boot process.

Processor is booting from first available device.

To discontinue, press any key within 10 seconds.

Boot terminated.

3. Search for all boot devices.

Main Menu: Enter command or menu > SEA

Searching for potential boot device(s)
This may take several minutes.

To discontinue search, press any key (termination may not be immediate).


Path# Device Path (dec) Device Path (mnem) Device Type
----- ----------------- ------------------ -----------
P0 0/0/2/0.6 intscsia.6 Random access media
P1 0/0/2/1.6 intscsib.6 Random access media
P2 0/4/0/0.1 Random access media
P3 0/8/0/0.8 Random access media
P4 1/12/0/0.8 Random access media

4. Boot off the CD-ROM. From the iostat -fnC disk command above, we see that the device path 0/4/0/0.1 is the CD-ROM drive. Do not interact with IPL.

Main Menu: Enter command or menu > BO P2
Interact with IPL (Y, N, or Cancel)?> N

5. From the CD-ROM menu, load the mediainit executable to low-level format the physical disks. Exit to a shell, and issue the mediainit command on the character device representing each physical disk.

#./mediainit /dev/rdsk/c1t6d0
#./mediainit /dev/rdsk/c2t6d0

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